Tuesday's election returns continue to reverberate: Mitt is now moot, Mike
Huckabee is running stronger than ever (for vice-president), and John
McCain, now the GOP's presidential nominee-in-waiting, is in trouble. But
only with capital-C, talk show Conservatives.
Just go down the list: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, even El
Rushbo himself . . . all sound dismayed, irritated and generally hacked off
at Senator McCain's commanding performance on Super Tuesday, which must have
seemed like Black Tuesday to the dittoheads of the world.
The Rev. Dr. James Dobson, who long ago was anointed pope of the Religious
Right by all-knowing talk radio, has washed his hands of this upstart
senator, this loose cannon on the good ship Ideological Conformity, who
refuses to meekly recite the Reverend Doctor's political rosary.
That's the trouble with John McCain; he's always been his own man. He just
will not go along with the party line, anybody's party line. He's always
given his interrogators a hard time, refusing to break no matter what
blandishments, punishments or calumnies are applied.
Sure, the man may get things done - like finding a way to get conservative
judges confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He may even prefer fixing a system
that's broken - like our immigration "system" - rather than just griping
about it. And if he's proving right about the war in Iraq or on terror in
general, well, that scarcely makes up for his unmitigated independence.
Consider the case of Ann Coulter, certified banshee of the American right.
(The uncharitable might say certifiable on the basis of her more operatic
performances.) The woman doesn't invite conversation so much as diagnosis.
With her unfailing instinct for the outrageous, Ms. Coulter is always
topping herself, and maybe has to, in order to keep our attention. Which she
certainly does. You just have to watch - the way you find yourself slowing
down to stare at a car wreck despite your best instincts.
Watching the Coulter Show, I keep thinking of one of those oh-so-mod
Shakespearean dramas staged in contemporary costume and placed in the most
jarring of settings - say, the executive suite of a modern Romneyesque
corporation - in which Lady Macbeth appears as a bottle blonde in correct
business attire text-messaging her latest order to Macbeth, Inc. When the
curtain comes up, the sight may be a little jarring, but you keep watching -
just to see what wretched excess comes next.
Ms. Coulter doesn't even have to raise her voice to be as grating as Chris
Matthews, the only political commentator whose spiel rivals those HEAD-ON
commercials for sheer volume. (Though his spiel may lack their intellectual
content).